Course in Organ Studies at the Orgelpark
by Hans Fidom |Photo's: Jan Smelik |Het ORGEL |Year 122 |(2026) |Issue 1| Categorie No category
Bepalen de noten van Bach hoe zijn Toccata in de Martinikerk in Groningen klinkt? Of toch vooral het orgel en de akoestiek waarin het bestaat?
To reduce or not to reduce – is that the question?
On the Tuesdays of the coming March, the Organ Park will host the twelfth edition of its annual Course in Organ Studies. Each year, the course focuses on a specific theme. Previous editions have addressed such topics as the nature of harmonisation, the functioning of human hearing, the craft of organ pipe making and voicing, and the tonal concepts of organ builders such as Arp Schnitger and Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. This spring, the central question concerns what we actually mean when we speak of “Bach’s Toccata” or “Beethoven’s Fifth”. We generally behave as if these were artworks with a clearly defined and stable identity—but is this assumption justified?
This question is prompted by the organ itself. Bach’s Toccata sounds markedly different in the Martinikerk in Groningen than it does in Utrecht Cathedral. Do these differences not matter, or are they precisely what engages us? More generally formulated: do we allow ourselves to ‘reduce’ such differences in order to maintain the idea that the same music has been heard in both cases, or do we instead regard such simplification as problematic?